Traditional Internet-based communications with the public at large are in the context of providing information (often coupled with advertising content) as in online newspaper associated portals, government sites, and the like. When backend operations interact with users, e.g., customer relation management software, they typically provide a point-to-point model in which a single customer communicates with only one service representative to resolve an issue. Issues raised by customers are often resolved one at a time and in complete isolation from other issues.
These characteristics of the known, or merely theoretically possible, solutions for interaction with the public-at-large make them slow and unsuitable for projects requiring interactions with a large number of participants, who necessarily have more limited roles in the overall project. Examples of such projects are found in the promulgation of regulations by government, whether local, state, or federal. There are about eighty thousand (80,000) agencies in the United States alone that promulgate regulations on myriad topics. Typically, such promulgations are required to conform to the notice and/or comment requirements in various Administrative Procedure Acts or their equivalent controlling legislation. Such legislative provisions typically require that notice of a proposed and adopted regulation be provided to the public. This is traditionally accomplished by publishing the rule in a gazette. In addition, the public may comment on a proposed rule to aid an agency in arriving at the final rule. It is estimated that there are upwards of one hundred and twenty thousand (120,000) agencies worldwide that are subject to a variety of procedures for soliciting and acting on public input.
The realization of the Internet and its use to provide information, e.g., tax statutes, regulations, forms and publications by the Internal Revenue Service, is clearly of great use in helping various agencies fulfill their assigned calling more effectively. However, merely providing a Web portal and an electronic mail address is insufficient for optimal participation by the public in rule making as envisaged and provided for in various legislative and other provisions. Internet usage is likely to grow with the lowered transaction costs for communicating via the Internet increasing the fraction of public-at-large receiving information via the Internet.
Such public participation may be in the form of surveys to gauge sentiment, debates on possible land use policy, feedback on proposed rules, opinions on developing a particular area, exchanging information for law enforcement purpose, and the like. Government may be made more responsive and efficient by the increased use of the Internet to not just lower transaction costs but to allow a different and new ways of administering.
Existing solutions comprise little more than providing a web portal and, optionally, email addresses. Effectively managing a large number of emails and other electronic inputs will increasingly stress the existing systems resulting in an overall increase in the cost of government. Moreover, receiving various submissions in multiple formats may result in both intra-system incompatibility and even make some of the information inaccessible overtime with no systematic method for upgrading or otherwise managing the submissions.
Current implementations also result in isolation of issues, which results in a failure to utilize experiences obtained through solving one issue in solving other issues. Further more, little collaboration between various agencies and representatives within an agency exists since they usually work on isolated issues. It is quite possible that relevant experience of various agencies and the staff within them is not apparent to their supervisors as well, thereby further reducing the cost-effectiveness of the point-to-point model compared to the investment required for creating and maintaining a web portal and electronic access.
Another problem associated with traditional systems is that it is difficult for members of the public-at-large to gather needed information related to their requests. Most people typically organize their needs in some form of a project structure. It is therefore nearly impossible for these customers to obtain a complete picture of all the needed information at a project level
Yet another problem associated with the point-to-point model is accessibility. The point-to-point models are limited to phone conversations and emails with the occasional online tracking service for customer requests. New technologies that we now use all the time (e.g. PDAs, Instant Messaging services) have not been integrated into these models. Moreover, information related to a request is usually kept in different formats such as word documents, powerpoint slides, emails, source code, etc. This makes it very difficult to access this information from different devices such as cell phones and PDAs.
Another challenge is in providing support for an online charetter effort. A ‘Charette’ is an intense effort to solve a problem, typically architectural, within a limited time. Consequently, intense cooperation within a team and various sub-teams is required to make the effort fruitful. It is not possible to implement such an effort with a large number of participating individuals due to the logistical and organizational challenges that are inevitably present with large numbers.